Every year at this time people tend to review the past and look forward to the future. In business, a performance review acts in the same manner. We have already seen a number of “Year in Reviews” for our current Council, but what about the coming year? What you think Council should be focusing on?

If you were providing a review for Council, what would you say to them for 2009? What would you tell them to Start doing, Stop doing or Do differently?

Share your thoughts.

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This issue has been one of the most widely commented posts. Possibly because it has raised a number of new and old issues — all of which have different levels of importance by different people within the community.

In spite of the letters in the local papers from Council, there are many questions still to be asked and answered. There will be more, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.

1. What is the role of Staff vs Council. Are Council too involved in day-to-day management of the Town affairs versus setting policy? Did staff follow procedures or did they blatantly disregard established procedures?
2. Impact of Council actions on staff morale. Are we getting the best performance from staff or are they hunkering down until the next election?
3. Are some of the issues tied to the loss of so many senior staff since this Council took office? Would the same situation have arisen if we had more seasoned senior staff in place and resultant less burden on the CAO?
4. Why does Council claim to only have found out recently about this issue when The Auroran communicated the issue months ago. See copy of staff memo here courtesy of Cllr Buck.
5. If the repair issues were a matter of safety, how much impact did Council’s demonstrated difficult making decisions have on staff actions. Were they damned if they did – damned if they didn’t?
6. What is the confidence in Council by the community?
7. What facts are correct and which ones are being manipulated to satisfy different agendas. Shouldn’t there only be one agenda — what is best for the Town?
8. Why do Council keep talking about getting the money returned — implying that the town is out approx $442,000. The newspapers have reported that the bulk had already been paid by the insurance company and just a smaller amount was still outstanding. Are the papers wrong and if so, why did the letter from Council not clarify this issue. If the newspapers are right, why the implication by Council. How much money is really outstanding to be repaid to the Town?
9. Why has the outstanding dollars for the repairs (which should be pursued by the Town) been tied to inappropriate behaviour by the staff? Staff actions don’t appear to have anything to do with this subject, but the message has implied that staff behaviour has lead to this lawsuit. The shouldn’t be any connection.
10. It re-opens the CAO termination issue. Was this used a “justification” for firing the CAO? If so, why was there a reported termination package versus dismissal with cause. Is there really cause fore the dismissal, or was this just an excuse? When will the citizens know the facts?

Openness and transparency is used by this Council regularly, it has become their mantra. It was used in both recent letters. However, how open and transparent are they being? Let’s continue to push for the full story – then we can make our own decision.

What other questions need to be answered? What is Council doing to answer these questions? The letters are not enough, more information needs to be communicated.

Share your thoughts. What are the important questions/issues to you and how do you think they should be handled.

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We teach our children that we live in a diverse world — one where different points of view are welcome and encouraged. Municipal politics should be no different

The comments on the latest post showed that this blog has started to evolve as a conversation and that is what is intended.

• We had saw some great points made about different side of various issues. Hopefully we will see more.
• We’ve questioned the facts — what is really happening at Town Hall and what is the spin — from either side of the issue. And importantly, we are demanding more transparency.
• We saw people use pseudonyms versus anonymous, so people could track individual perspectives and address their responses to specific people. Thanks “Not Walt” for making that suggestion. So pick you nom de plume and start contributing.
• We’ve all become bored with “anonymous” who’s only contribution to-date has been to complain about the anonymous posts — while making all their own posts anonymous.

So folks — congratulations.

Over the weekend, we will start conversation threads on a number of topics that have been discussed, so people can weight in on whatever topics they want.

Also, if there is another topic you would like to see discussed — send a note or post under your new pseudonyms and we will start a new discussion.

Please take the opportunity to tell your friends and neighbours who share your interest in town affairs to get in on the conversation.

Have a great weekend.

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Council has once again demonstrated their difficultly making a well thought through decision. This time on windrows.

One cannot help but wonder how much consultation was done with the affected folks — the seniors who are to “benefit” from this service — before the decision was made to implement the pilot project.

How hard would it have been to have set up a meeting with the seniors to discuss the issue and asked them for their input before making a decision. If they had, they certainly would have heard the feedback recently provided. Or is this just another example of responding to the most recent squeaky wheel?

It does not inspire much confidence in their decision-making process when simple things like clearing windrows requires so much time and reversal of decisions. It’s no wonder more critical decisions are such a burden on their collective abilities.

It’s time this Council showed some leadership and did their homework before making decisions. I think we would all sleep better.

What do you think? Should the town subsidize the plowing of windrows? Check out the poll!

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